


Want for Wings

by minkmix



Category: Cardcaptor Sakura
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 12:34:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14449392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkmix/pseuds/minkmix
Summary: Touya begins Clow's Universe.





	1. Chapter 1

Touya had not expected it would be today.

He did expect, however, and that was enough to mystify even himself.

Precisely what he did not know. Some called gifts curses. Some were cursed with gifts. He wondered at times which he was and if it mattered. Unexplained instincts had been a part of him since childhood. Strange colors and scents no one else could identify. For instance, he had always known his friendship with Yukito had been no accident.

"Toya?"

Yukito removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He looked back up to him without putting them back on.

"I can see."

"What?"

Yukito blinked several times and held up his glasses as if they had suddenly, inexplicably, appeared in his hand. "I can see," he repeated softly.

Touya felt a sliver of alarm unwind slowly as he studied Yukitos puzzled face.

He looked tentatively past Touya down the long empty hallway. "Soccer Practice Canceled."

Touya turned and saw Yukito had read a sign on the farthest door that lead out to the gym. He had to squint to see it said anything at all and, he only knew Yukito was right because he had hung it there himself

Yukito looked back down at the glasses he had needed for his entire life and then back to Touya as if he could offer some kind of explanation.

Touya felt the small agonizing tug at the corner of his mind as something started to change in the very air itself. Touya knew he was the only one, as always, to sense it. It started with one small whisper caught from nowhere and everywhere. Then the whisper became two, then three and then soon a roar of pleading, cursing, screaming, that nothing could block out.

He felt it hit him slowly but hard and he stumbled backwards.

The abandoned hall was suddenly crowded with flashes of half seen figures and strange shadows. Touya gripped the table next to him to steady himself, shutting his eyes. Sometimes he could will them to go away if he concentrated hard enough-

"Toya?" Yukito had a voice that was as soft as the whispers that slithered through the air, eager to be seen by this living being. "Are you okay?"

"I-" He couldn't trust himself to speak without telling the truth. Over a lifetime of watching the shadows traverse the world, he learned quickly that what he told others drove them away, or worse. Maybe Yukito would listen, maybe he wouldn't think he was completely insane...

The solace of that thought hushed the murmurs around him. They receded sadly like an ocean wave drawing back across sand. He slowly opened his eyes and saw the hall empty once more. A trembling hand was on his shoulder. Touya's heart skipped. Yukito. His familiar shape. The color of his eyes. The tone of his skin and his hair.

It was wrong.

It was as wrong as the hectic flutter that he knew were the dead. Was this what the souls near him were disturbed by? They sometimes gave warnings of disaster like a bird whom sees the predator first in a forest. But this was different. This was something he had felt before but much more rarely.

Not human. Before his eyes, a silvery sheen began to form on Yukito's skin.

The sudden shrill ring of the bell signaling the end of class startled them both.

He had to hide Yukito. No one could see this.

"Toya!" Yukito protested as Touya grabbed his wrist roughly and pulled him behind his back. "What are you doing-"

"Be quiet."

The doors were opening and the hall was going to be filled with hundreds of students and they would all see what he could see if he didn't find...

A closet. Locked.

He growled in frustration as he felt change ripple under the flesh on the wrist he held locked in his fist. The stairs to the school basement. He pulled open the heavy door, pushed Yukito inside and shut it behind them. It was dark, but somehow the stairwell was faintly lit. Touya quickly realized that the luminous glow was coming from Yukito's skin.

Yukito, still holding his glasses, looked back at him in confusion and hurt. The light at that moment pulsed softly yet brightly. Yukito's eyes were wide, confusion turned to panic as he stared down at his white hands.

Touya tried to calm his own breathing. "Yuki. Something is happening to you."

Yukito's breathing was erratic, his face pleading. One hand grabbed tightly the fabric of Touya's blazer, as though he were trying to stay grounded. "Toya."

Touya's stomach lurched as Yukito gave a sudden small cry, hunching over himself as though in pain. Urgently, Touya gripped Yukito's shoulders, straining his senses to hear the chatter of spirits he always tried to suppress. Sometimes these voices held more than just madness, but now their winding whispers were fearful and incoherent. Touya felt their fright vividly. "What is it!"

Yukito's eyes were squeezed tight and he did not hear him. He did not hear his panicked questions, nor feel the firm hands on his shoulders. In the closed darkness, before Touya's eyes, Yukito was changing. Touya suddenly felt scared to touch him. He drew back, recoiling as Yukito shuddered and sank to the ground, hugging himself tightly. Touya's breath hitched in his chest, watching him helplessly. His skin had turned so pale it was transparent, the glow within him surging and waning rhythmically.

Yukito was fading, leaving him behind.

Molten streaks of white light bled violently across Yukito's face. It was flowing from Yukito's hunched back, cracks in his shirt pulsing with the glow. The frenzied voices of his ghosts coursing around them suddenly grew still. Touya braced himself in the hard gust of their passage as they swept up the stairs and through the walls as if they feared what approached.

Touya went cold, realization hitting him.

Something else was arriving.

He had to do something, anything, to shake Yukito back into this existence and hold him here. He rushed forward, arm extended, when a terrible gasp from Yukito stopped him mid stride Touya blinked hard, his suddenly vision painful. Yukito was crying out to him, asking for help. But Touya could not see him. The white light usurped him, shrouded him and from his body an enormous shape burst forth spraying the light like blood. Touya flung his arm up at the silent explosion and felt stinging cold droplets splatter across his exposed skin.

When Touya could see again, Yukito was no more.

 

 

 

 

The being that now stood in his place was tall.

It was regarding him, appraising him with eyes he had never seen before. They were old eyes. Terrible eyes. Touya stood a moment in shock, unable to breathe, until the reality of the long white hair, the still face hit him and he rushed forward, grasping a fold of the creature's robe.

It felt real.

It folded long arms around his shoulders and pressed him tightly against its body. The iron grip held him up, as though he were weightless. Dizzy and uncertain he felt a change in the air around him. He blinked his eyes in the sudden daylight and felt a crushing grip encircling his waist.

It was his school below him.

Inertia rushed in crazily, like intoxication. His body was suddenly an insubstantial thing. Motion so fast it did not seem like it at all, a flash of soft white. Wings. Touya stared from the thing's embrace. They were large and terrifying close, cutting the loud, hectic wall of air effortlessly. Their rushing filled his senses. The air was thin. Weakly, he lifted his head to gaze up at the impassive face.

What was he?

Where were they going?

He never felt the journey's end. He knew only that there was silence and still and cold. He was lying on hard ground, the deep cold seeping through his skin. Weakly he sat up, blinking in disorientation. A plain of barren white snow, bleak and undisturbed for as far as he could see.

No trees. Nothing alive. Like being on the surface of the moon.

Just he and this being.

 

 

 

He stood unsteadily as it approached him.

"You have power." It said.

The creature grasped Touya's arm so fiercely that he crumpled to his knees in pain. He gasped as he felt a pull so deep it was as if his heart was being squeezed inside his chest.

It stopped suddenly and Touya knew somehow that he had had something taken from him. He felt lighter, weaker, unfocused. Unsupported, he slumped heavily to the ground at the creatures bare feet. "Yuki-"

"Interesting."

Folding its broad wings behind it gracefully, it crouched and put a finger under Touyas chin to look into his eyes. "This child is mine."

Touya felt pain and helpless rage at the certainty behind those words. He wanted to know what this being was and why it was here. But he could only manage one word. "Why?"

The hard features of the thing suddenly shifted to what Touya thought might have been grief. "Have you ever lost anything very dear to you?"

Touya clenched his teeth when his mother's face suddenly came unbidden in his mind as clear as a photograph.

"Yes." It said, the fine mouth curving into a frown. "There."

Touya's anger flared again. It was horrible that this being could take that. His private pain. Hundreds of moments of his mothers life that he hadn't even shared with Sakura was suddenly there for taking by this thing.

"This child is mine because my Master is gone."

Touya shuddered in the frigid snow trying to comprehend the creature's words. But he only wanted to know one thing.

The creature leaned down close to him and with its proximity came its light.

The light suffused his skin like water. Touya swallowed, his throat dry. The being smelled cold. It smelled like the still snow that he lay in while its breath on the exposed skin of his neck made him groan. "Will Yuki-"

"Recede?" The being asked.

Touya felt himself go perfectly still as he felt hands on his face. Large hands. Too large. Its words were close to his ear like the echo of those lived no longer as human beings. Its voice sounded made up of the winds that blew in this serene lonely place. He knew this voice held him in way that ropes could not.

"Vanish?"

His tongue would not work.

"Die?"

Touya shut his eyes, humiliated by the small sob he heard in the back of his own throat. "Where is he?"

It paused. "Where does anything go?" It asked him as if fully expecting to be answered.

Hot tears leaked from his eyes and burned trails on his frozen cheeks as he waited for this being to use the strength barely held in check in the delicate pale hands. It could crush his throat as easily as it stroked at his wet face in wonderment.

But then it was gone with the gentle steady beat of wings.

 

 

 

The low rumble of the school boiler roused Touya from his daze. His back was uncomfortably laying on the very bottom of the stairs and his clothes clung to his clammy skin with damp and cold.

He was back in the school basement. The sound of feet shuffling above them carried the reality of voices and the chiming of the school bell. He sat up wearily. No snow. No creature. Not even the barest trace of a sigh from the ghosts he knew never quite left his side.

"To-To-ya." The voice was small and full of panic. "Where are you? I can't see!"

Touya let himself collapse back on the steps in breathless relief. He saw the glasses laying on the floor by Yukitos feet. One lense cracked.

"On the floor. Right in front of you."

Yukito, hands out, got to his knees and crawled across the floor until he found his glasses. He fumbled with them briefly before he got them back onto his face. "What happened?" Yukito looked around in fear. "To-ya!" He finally saw his friend laying half on the steps, half on the dirty basement floor.

He shuddered when Yukitos shaking hands smoothed the hair back from his face and searched his chest and arms for signs of damage. They felt light and cool as the creature he witnessed.

Touya touched Yukitos face and his friend stopped. There was no memory in those gray eyes of what had happened. There was no pain remembered of the being that erupted from somewhere within his skin and emerged by force to use this body, like a vehicle, like a skin to be later cast away.

Yuki.

He did not know a thing. That secret was not his to bear or even witness. If Touya could help it, it would remain so.


	2. The Ripping

Touya opened the door and watched Yukito walk up the front walk.

Rain was hissing softly on the leaves of the trees. The roads seemed empty of cars and the loud motorcycle that Touya often heard going by seemed muted, and farther away then the road just beyond the garden wall. Not long ago this kind of day was the kind that he used to loathe. It was a day that meant no playing ball out in the road. It caused adults to withdraw into their books or unintelligible newspapers. It was hushed and boring.

But not anymore. Touya liked these quiet subdued afternoons. Maybe, he mused, it was a sign of leaving childhood behind in the hot grass.

Yukito tapped his wet umbrella twice on the ground and shut it. The rain had made his glasses speckled with water so after he stepped inside he wiped them clean and steadied them back on his nose. 

Touya felt like smiling for a change, so he did, while he took Yukito's damp coat. This was the type of day when the sky was so filled with clouds it didn't really appear cloudy at all while it misted down with rain and humid cold.

It was just serene gray.

It was, Touya noticed, very much like the gray in Yukito's eyes.

 

 

 

The house was blissfully empty. He felt a twinge of guilt for feeling pleasure at the absence of his small family. However, a day he didn't have to rush to a job immediately after school or practice and then clean the house was sometimes welcome.

"Are you hungry?" He asked Yukito. It made him smile again because he knew that he really didn't mind caring for Yukito, even if he was tired of caring for anyone else.

"That is nice to see." Yukito said warmly, catching the second smile that Touya tried to hide. "You seem very tired these days."

"Work." Touya said simply knowing Yukito would follow him up to his room without being told or invited. But his smile died as he walked up the steps. Work was not completely the entire truth as to why he was lately so exhausted all of the time. He hadn't been sleeping very well. Actually, in all honesty he hadn't been sleeping at all. It had been almost two months since everything had changed so… completely.

Whenever he closed his eyes all he could see were those wings and hear them beating with each dull thud as they worked laboriously through the air. That sound had never left his mind either waking or sleeping. It was an effort not to stare at Yukito too long or too hard for fear of the questions that started in his eyes and it was taking its toll on Touya. He had even begun to avoid Yukito at first but he could not break the easy company Yukito gave to him effortlessly. Whatever was keeping Touya going everyday wasn't going to last much longer.

This child is mine.

Touya's hand lingered on the doorknob of his room too long.

"Toya?" Yukito ventured. He always was a gentle barometer of his mood no matter how well concealed or disguised.

"Are you hungry?"

Yukito nodded, uncertain and wanting to ask him what was wrong.

You look more tired than I do my friend, Touya thought, and he left Yukito at the threshold of his bedroom without another word.

 

 

Touya sat in the silence that he shared with Yukito on almost all occasions. It was as if Yukito was that pure embodiment of what made these slow dim days so quiet and peaceful. Touya noticed that Yukito had this effect on most people when they were in his presence. They spoke a bit lower and let the edge of whatever worry or sorrow that was consuming them on the inside of their day fall away and be replaced by a calm.

"These noodles are very good Toya." Yukito said drinking the broth from the bowl.

Maybe most people would not have noticed the subtle shift Yukito had seemed to take but Touya saw in plainly. There was some kind of pain behind Yukito's warmth that before the incident at school had never been there. He knew pain like that when he saw it. He saw it often enough in the players he fought with on the grassy fields behind the school. It was a mask. It was the barely disguised limp you used after you've wrenched your ankle and you don't want your coach to remove you from the game.

So you smiled and kept going. But you can't keep it up forever.

"Yuki?" Touya felt sudden deep confusion of how to even continue. "How do you feel?"

Yukito blinked at him and then looked down self consciously. "I suppose I've been a little tired too," he laughed nervously.

The pain was there behind that laugh. The lilt of the laughter fell through the air and all at once, seemed to crack it.

Touya braced himself.

A whisper of a spirit rose and stirred by Touya's ear emitting a deep screech that made his skin go into goose flesh. He opened the small tap of power he knew would allow him to listen to it closer without permitting the flood that waited to engulf him. It whined and moaned through the air and wound carefully but longingly around Yukito's face with a hunger Touya did not like. 

"What is it Toya?" Yukito finally asked. This time in his concern the mask fell completely away and made Touya ache to see the true depth of it.

Another thread of murmuring joined the first and wrapped itself around Yukito's throat.

Yukito of course, saw or felt nothing.

Touya watched the slow gathering of spirits carefully noting this was the second time these souls were so drawn to Yukito. That afternoon in the school hallway was the first time Touya had seen them show any interest in his friend. The answer was clear but it did not make Touya comfortable. They sensed that creature within his friend and the power burning somehow beneath his pale skin. They sensed it and were drawn to it.

But to what end?

"Toya?" Yukito's voice wavered. "May I tell you something?"

Touya pulled his will back from the edge of his distraction, bringing Yukito back into focus and silencing the despair of the swarming ghosts.

"Of course."

"I have been..." Yukito paused, and put his hand to his mouth, unsure if he should say what was on his mind.

Touya started to breath faster. "Go on?"

"I have been afraid." He simply said.

Touya resisted the urge to place his hand out and touch the soft dove gray of his hair and maybe even hold him. What would happen then he wondered? Would pressing him to his flesh let loose these hungry shadows like opening a bag of grain?

"I've been getting some very strange phone calls."

Touya blinked. He had not been expecting him to say something that was so curiously a human threat. He felt suddenly relieved that the words he was sure that were going to come forth did not. 

"For a week now," Yukito went on, "Every night, sometimes at dawn. The phone rings and rings until we answer it. Grandfather even had the number changed but it still rings."

Touya felt the concern resurface.

"Whoever it is has never said anything when we answer."

"Until now." Touya knew.

"Until now." Yukito repeated, his face drawn in wearied confusion. "The phone rang late last night."

Touya waited.

"The voice on the telephone said: I need you."

The curling tendrils of the souls writhed and undulated madly at his words.

Touya went cold.

 

 

Yukito walked home slowly idly twisting the handle of his open umbrella and not meeting the eyes of anyone he passed. Even watching his feet he stumbled over a root that had grown through the sidewalk. He caught himself before he fell down hard to the ground.

He sighed. He was so tired he could barely put one foot in front of the other. He chewed at his lip. It wasn't as if he couldn't manage any rest. Some nights it took everything he had not to crawl into bed before his grandmother had even finished washing the plates from their dinner. Even the large dinners themselves were no longer satisfying his already notable appetite. The sleep he dropped into was so deep his grandmother had gently chided him several times that her calls in the morning had not been enough to rouse him. Not very long ago it had taken nothing but the first rays of the sun to open his eyes.

It had taken a lot to confess about his mysterious caller to Touya. One part of him saw himself appearing overtly silly in Touya's eyes. How dangerous was a phone call that was probably some harmless crush from someone in their school? Yukito breathed easier as he thought about that likely hood but then returned to the nagging doubt that lingered. He really wanted to tell Touya most of all because if anyone could put his mind at ease with a simple gesture or word, it was Touya. His clear and practical nature easily dismissed the unfounded care or the prosperous notion so that you were left wondering why you ever worried about it all.

But that is not what happened.

Touya had looked....Yukito sighed. He had looked scared.

Touya had been wearing that expression in one way or another since that strange day at school. That had been worrying Yukito a bit as well. He had never experienced what he had been heard called "blackouts" but he was almost certain he had had one several weeks ago in the school basement. 

"It's just because I am so worn out." Yukito said out loud, his breath misting in the cool rain air. Maybe he would cut back on some more of the after school activities he helped or joined-

"Excuse me." A voice suddenly said.

Yukito halted abruptly quite startled. He pulled his umbrella back as to not run into the man who must have stopped directly in his path.

But no one was there.

Yukito swung around in a full circle with wide eyes. The wet sidewalk was empty save for a long high wall and trees.

"Hello?" Yukito called out. The wind gusted briefly and sprayed droplets of rain onto his face.

Yukito felt the hand that held up his umbrella begin to shake. He suddenly didn't feel good. He wanted to go home and lay down. "Is someone there?"

"Yes."

Yukito let out a small sound as he turned and saw a tall man where no man had been only seconds before.

 

 

 

The simple nature of the statement made Touya pedal harder as he rode his bike under the dripping trees. Even a day later it had not stopped drizzling.

I need you.

He knew that this was not an elaborate declaration. If anyone asked him why he was so certain he wouldn't have been able to give any assurance as to why he knew this to be a truth. He just knew the same way he knew lots of things. The bike wheels crunched through the broken rock that lined the paths of the park. The trees threw shadows even though the sun still hadn't emerged from the gray despite Sakura hanging little paper ghosts in every window of the house. The shadows parted for him as he rode by, some reaching out in his wake alerted that he could see and hear them.

Deep in his thoughts, he barely noticed them today.

Touya knew that he had thought that the realm of his knowledge was fixed. Even with the strange side of the world exposed to him he still maintained that it had comfortable limits like the world everyone else worked and lived in. He expected new maybe even shocking events to happen in both but he had prided himself in being aware of their possibility. He thought he knew what the limits were of his ghosts but he had been worse than wrong. Touya hadn't even conceived of what might be happening and it had shaken his confidence badly.

Could they do more than whisper and speak, these souls? What was it that was searching for Yukito and speaking to him in the only way it could be heard by someone spiritually sightless? Was it the creature evolving forth like an insect from its cocoon? The image of the broad white wings unfolding wet and unused made Touya's stomach turn.

I need you. Need can be a dire thing.

You need food. You need air. You need water. Touya stopped his bike and stared at the neat expanse of Yukito's garden. It was vibrantly green in the rain.

You need these things to stay alive.

Touya frowned. He knocked on the door in a series of short knocks hoping, as he always did, that he was not disturbing Yukito's elderly grand parents with his visit. The door opened very quickly, startling Touya.

"Oh, Touya, good afternoon." Yukito's grandfather stood, with his grandmother not far behind him. They both had a peculiar looks on their faces. Expectant. Embarrassed. "You have received our phone call."

He greeted them both with a bow and shook his head.

"It is strange, our telephone..."the older man's voice trailed off as he looked vaguely somewhere behind him."... the telephone has not been working correctly lately."

"Yukito mentioned-"

"He is not here!" It was said too urgently and loudly. Yukito's grandmother was clutching her husband and the doorframe seemingly afraid to let go of either.

Touya felt his unease rise to the back of his throat.

"He never came home yesterday, we hoped he might have stayed-"

"No." Touya interrupted her. "He did not stay with me." The look on their faces made him turn his eyes towards the ground.

The ghosts that wandered the clouds howled far above them as he entered the house and the door closed behind him.

 

He felt numb as he rode home. Touya knew the police would not be able to do anything but he had rang them anyway at the request of Yukitos grandmother. All he could do was sit and answer the required questions one by one while they wrote in little notepads and tried to ignore Yukito's grandmother who was weeping in her husband's frail arms.

Touya left feeling ineffectual and anxious. He didn't know what to do. He didn't even know what questions to have. And even if he did, he thought as he gritted his teeth, whom would he ask? All he knew for sure was that time was being wasted.

The rain seemed to have lessened its hold during the course of the day but now it streamed down in torrents. Touya looked up in the sky for the sun that he knew shone bright and high even though it was lost for now hidden up somewhere above him.

He hoped it was trying to break free.


	3. Chapter 3

 

The rain had not stopped.

Touya only half listened to his father each evening whenever he quietly asked for news. He could ignore Sakura's hesitant questions but the word had spread through the high school overnight. All the students wanted to ask him where, what and how but they saw his withdrawal. They stared at him then whispered once he'd passed by. He sat in class and could focus on nothing.

His teacher had quietly accepted a test handed in completely blank. No one bothered him when he didn't attend soccer practice. He went to work early and left late, sometimes late enough that his house was dark but for one light left on in the kitchen where a plate of dinner waited for him.

 

 

Today, Touya didn't go home at all.

He couldn't help himself, he felt drawn down the path he knew Yukito walked to travel from his house to his own. He had done so everyday hoping that he would see some small sign but of what he did not know.

He paused looking down at the sidewalk and imagined Yukito walking across this very spot. Touya closed his eyes. He wanted to see one little trace of Yukito, something he could hold or see and know that Yukito hadn't just been swallowed up by the ground.

There was a small flicker that made him look up sharply. Until now all his efforts to prod forth any information no matter how useless from the spirits that flocked around him had been fruitless. Today was different. Something was new. The usual senseless noise of their chatter was concentrated, drawing him towards one place.

His gaze went off the sidewalk and across the street. The edge of a small stand of trees that lined a low wall swayed gently with the rain. He stared at the grove dilating his mind open cautiously to whatever shadows lived here. They had seen something.

The street was empty as he crossed it, his pace quickening with the growing strength of the call. He jumped the stone wall easily and walked cautiously through the rotted wet leaves under his feet. The trees ended after a few yards and gave way to a mass of undergrowth and then, beyond that Touya could hear the rush of water into a storm drain.

Ignoring the brambles that tore at his clothes Touya prepared to enter the thicket. But then he stopped.

Yukito's umbrella.

It didn't shock him that the police hadn't found it. Touya had seen it in their eyes when they confronted Yukito's grandparents. They weren't looking for a missing teenager that would probably reappear after a few days.

Hesitantly, Touya leaned down to pick it up as if touching it would make the implications of its presence that much more real. He pulled the open umbrella from the tangle of bushes with a little difficulty. It was torn and the metal handle was bent almost in half.

It was dry.

Touya's eyes widened. It had been raining for days but this umbrella was as dry as if someone had just dropped it there moments ago... He looked around wildly and without thinking he let the guarded walls in his mind crash open like a floodgate. It hurt, the sudden deluge of it all, reaching past the grove up the streets as far as his school and beyond. His vision dimmed with the knowledge that whomever dropped this possession of Yukito's moments before his arrival was no where to be found. Gasping, Touya fell against the wet bark of a tree and willed the walls back up until the roar returned back to a trickle.

He stumbled, soaking his trouser knees in the wet soil while he steadied his breathing. A search through the shrubs borne nothing else.

Touya walked home slowly with the umbrella under his arm. He at least knew now that Yukito hadn't simply vanished.

He had been taken.

 

 

 

It was a small dark confined place.

The beastly roar of the creature ripped through the air as white flames streamed around it forming solidly into burning chains. They lashed in countless numbers across its flesh, fraying open its robes and sizzling against its chest.

Touya watched as it writhed and pleaded to him with an outstretched hand. He stepped towards it shielding his eyes from the crackle and heat of the light as it intensified.

It threw its body against its binds futility. The wail of its sadness rang low and horrible.

The creature went mad in agony.

Touya sank his fist into the unbearable inferno that surrounded the winged being but as soon as his flesh met the barrier, his skin withered and began to scorch. Slowly, he withdrew his hand and saw it blackened, a charred stump at his wrist, his arm burning-

 

 

Touya sat upright in bed tangled in his sheets.

His heart was thudding in his chest and his skin was damp with a cold sweat. He looked around frantically slowly realizing that he had been dreaming one of those dreams that always seemed more real that your own bedroom walls. Listening to the rain beat on the window brought him back to himself.

He jumped at the sound of his alarm clock. Shutting it off with a trembling hand he then sat at the edge of his bed.

It was that creature. It was in pain.

Dressing slowly in the near darkness of morning he did not dare yet think of what it may mean.

 

 

 

Touya didn't take his bicycle that day. He felt like prolonging his journey to school so he had more time to think without the other students watching him. The backpack he carried felt heavy even though it only had one thing in it besides a few books. He gripped the strap hard and clenched his jaw. The umbrella.

It was wrong not to tell Yukito's grand parents he had found it but he thought the sight of it would bring more worry than good. Even if he kept this information to himself he knew he should go and see them no matter how hard it was too look into their eyes.

Without dwelling on the idea he changed his direction and was soon standing in front of Yukito's home. Branches and leaves were scattered over the once pristine grass and the gate hung half open.

Touya took a deep breath to let in the sounds of the voices that waited like the air waited to be inhaled. A few startled ghosts fled into the trees and into the windows. The house seemed too dark. Touya was reminded of when he and his bored friends would wander the abandoned buildings that sat condemned on the city edge. They felt like this house did now. Unused and lonely from the outside.

The quiet as he approached the door was more unsettling than any bluster of the dead had ever produced. Too his surprise the door was slightly ajar but he knocked loudly twice before he pushed it open.

Touya had been within Yukito's home on only three different occasions. The first time was right here and no farther than this foyer while he waited for Yukito to put on his coat. The second was also this foyer when Yukito had insisted he wait out of the rain while he changed clothes upstairs. The third was several days ago in the sitting room which sat just a few steps beside the foyer while he spoke to police.

Touya was suddenly aware that the rest of the house was completely unknown to him. It should have seemed strange to him before this very moment but for some reason it had never occurred to him to wonder.

"Hello?" As soon as the sound of his voice hit the walls of the house Touya knew he was absolutely alone. The door remained open behind him emitting a wedge of gloomy light against the wooden floor.

Looking sideways he could see the small sitting room where he had mumbled to the police officers. Moving slowly, he stopped by the chair Yukito's grandmother had sat in while she failed to keep back her tears. Around a corner he saw the dark kitchen. Walking through it he found what he assumed would be a living room if it had had any furniture in it. He followed the room around which let him back out at the front door.

Where had they gone? The house didn't even seem to have that hurried sense of a departure with left over boxes and abandoned magazines on the bare floors. It was as if this house had sat in this state undisturbed for a very long time.

The foot of the stairs lay just ahead of him. Touya looked up into the gloom of the second floor and walked slowly up the creaking steps. He halted in the hall. No pictures adorned the walls and only one door along the corridor was open.

This was Yukito's room.

Touya knew it like he knew the house was void of any living thing besides himself. He laid his hand on the doorframe still weary of breaching privacy even if unwatched. Most especially Yukito's privacy. The room made his heart lurch. Like the rest of the house save for the sitting room, it was completely empty but for a simple futon that was neatly made in the center. The window was bare. There was no other furniture and only one closet that lay open without even a hanger in it.

Yukito who loved flowers, spent hours in the library reading through over sized books of art, and sometimes looked longingly in the shop windows, slept and lived in this place. This room reflected none of the warm cheer he had.

Touya stepped through the doorway aware of the smell of dust and stale air. The futon was clean and the sheets folded sharply at the corners. The pillow lay in the perfect center at the very top edge of the sheet. It was right then in the murky light that Touya caught a glimpse of gold. There, hanging from a simple nail in the wall was a charm. He slipped it off carefully, and laid it in the palm of his hand.

The only adornment, the only decoration anywhere was this. Touya remembered giving it to Yukito last spring during Hanami. It was for luck, he told him, and protection. It had been a whim. Yukito had smiled at him and thanked him half jokingly because it wasn't a very nice one. It was one of the cheap kind the vendors always somehow talked you into. The red paper that it was made of had started to curl and the gold plastic had begun to flake. He never thought Yukito would keep it.

He never thought Yukito would hang it on his wall above his bed.

The edges of the charm bit into his shaking fist. He tossed the charm onto the futon and walked back out into the hall. There were three other doors. One revealed a stark bathroom with faucets, Touya wasn't shocked to discover, that gave no water. The other two were dark but obviously unoccupied by anything but silence. He stood in the middle of the last room at the end of the hall and felt his shoulders begin to shake.

"Yuki…"

Toya?

Touya swung around his senses flaring white hot. Someone had said his name very softly, so softly he had almost not heard it. He gaze was trained on the hall when he saw a shadow shift and move quickly away with the sound of footsteps retreating quickly on the wooden floor. This was no ghost.

"Wait!" Touya breathed, his heart beating so quickly his vision swam. He ran to the door way and saw the shape disappear into Yukito's room. Touya rushed after it, smashing his shoulder into the door jam in his pursuit.

He stood panting, the adrenaline flooding his system made him dizzy. Every fine line in the gloom stood out in clarity.

The room was as it was. The window. The bed.

His breath caught in his throat.

The charm that he had cast onto the futon was no longer there.

It was back on the nail, carefully hung on the wall and swaying softly as if it had just been placed there.

 

 

Touya left, eyes burning down the walkway covered in puddles and onto the street for home. Night was far off but the clouds were so thick overhead that the street lights blinked on one by one making circles of the rainfall, one by one.

He was so distracted, he did not see the kid walk directly into him.

Touya stopped, jarred out of his state by the abrupt contact. An automatic "Excuse me." left his mouth. He turned and his eyes widened in recognition.

It was that boy.

He was the new boy, the transfer student from China. Touya had seen him walking around by himself at Sakura's school. No one seemed to talk to him and Touya had the impression when he saw him sitting alone, that this boy preferred it that way. Small and dark haired, he stared up at Touya.

"You've seen him." The boy stated. His Japanese was functional.

Touya frowned a moment in confusion. Then he swallowed, too tired and too unsure whether or not he should put on a facade of normalcy. Before he could say a word, the kid turned his back and ran down the street in the direction Touya had just come.

It was then he realized, that he hadn't been asked a question but instead, was told an answer.

His vision was blurred and hot and thoughts filled his head with a sensation he had not felt in many days. It was small and wavering, but it was there just as sure as the charm he had left hanging in that barren room.

It felt like hope.


	4. Chapter 4

 

Touya woke up with a start and groaned.

Without meaning to, he'd managed to fall asleep in one of the two chairs in the place. He rubbed his cramped neck and took note of the soft light that fell through the windows. It was morning.

He knew he should have gone home last night after putting Yukito in his bed but he couldn't stand the thought of leaving him alone in this house. Grimacing, he imagined his father, maybe at this exact moment, opening the door of his room and realizing that he never came home. Touya regretted the worry he knew it would cause. If the telephone here worked he would call him. What he would say he wasn't quite sure.

He paused, the hand working on his neck going still.

Yukito was standing just beyond the door way and staring at him.

"You're awake." Touya said, struggling with a smile. He had thought long into the previous night right in this chair wondering what he would say to Yukito. He hadn't thought of one reasonable thing.

Yukito adjusted his glasses and smiled back, his attempt as feeble and failed as Touya's. His shirt with rolled up sleeves was crumpled from sleep, his hair unbrushed. Saying nothing, he lifted his hand in which held a rectangular piece of paper.

Touya stood and honed his senses on it and saw the shadows swirl above it and flow down into in a tight whirlpool. He knew at once that it contained power. Touya did not move any closer but he could see now that it wasn't paper. It was more like a large playing card.

"I-I think you should take it." Yukito's voice cracked, raw and unused. "It was in my hand." He held it out and it shook in his unsteady fingers. "When I w-woke up."

Touya approached him slowly, opening his ability wide in order to watch the ghosts carefully. They didn't fear this object in Yukito's hand in fact it was quite the opposite, they fluttered around it in excitement and yearning. Where had it come from?

The stiff paper was cool to the touch. Touya laid it in the palm of his hand and studied it. It was covered in a strange pattern that made him think of the elaborate intricacies he'd once seen in a book of western medieval art. He flipped it over.

The other side depicted a finely made oval to contain a fanciful and surely finely wrought picture but the frame was empty.

It was blank as if unfinished.

"What is it?" Touya whispered to himself. He turned it over several times in his hands before he looked back up.

Yukito had put on his shoes and was walking out the front door without his coat.

 

 

 

"Yuki!" Touya almost didn't bother with the sneakers he had kicked off and left laying the foyer the night before. He jammed them onto his feet, running to catch up. The sun had newly risen behind the clouds with none but the two of them awake and alive in the cold mist.

Reaching his side Touya thought about stopping Yukito with a hand on his shoulder, but something made Touya reconsider. "Where are you going?"

"I don't know." Yukito's voice was removed, distracted as he moved ahead of him. Touya followed warily, deciding to let Yukito's affliction take him wherever it lead. He felt the card in his pocket and his resolve hardened. Maybe Yukito really did not know where he was going. Maybe there would be danger. But there might also be answers.

He followed in silence until they had reached a wooded area a few blocks away from his own house. Touya looked around in confusion, his eyes scanning the vaguely familiar clump of shrubs and trees he passed every day to school.

It was the spot where he had found the umbrella.

This was where Yukito had been taken.

"This place..." Touya began but Yukito had halted in the middle of the street. Standing perfectly still he was eerily alert and expectant. It was deathly quiet. The cold air seemed to thrum around them as the chill turned from brisk to biting. The spirits began to wail and flee from where they had been resting in the trees.

Something was drawing near.

A sudden strong wind roared down from the sky, spraying them both with stinging rain in a flurry of damp leaves. Touya braced himself, readying himself for anything.

Yukito's chest suddenly hitched and he jerked slightly with a sharp intake of breath. His eyes never left the thicket that lead into the woods beyond as if he could see whatever approached looming and growing larger on the horizon.

In a voice not his own, he uttered one word to Touya.

"Hide."

Shaken by the unnatural monotone, Touya could only obey. Stumbling backwards, he jumped the fence of the nearby house and hid behind a large sprawling oak just beyond it.

When he looked back around the tree Yukito was not alone.

A man stood close to him.

 

 

 

At first Touya thought the man was just closer to his hiding place than he had first believed but he soon realized that the man was just unnaturally tall, and unnaturally thin. The width of its hips were barely the span of Touya's hands put together.

Moving towards Yukito slowly, it appeared to mimic a man but watching him in motion, Touya could see it held traits no normal human man possessed. Its blank dark eyes had no natural color or as far as Touya could see, any lids at all. What he assumed was a suit as black as pitch was in fact its unclothed skin.

The dim eyes flared a demented orange as its willowy limbs unfolded towards Yukito. It was not a ghost like Clow but Touya could feel an incredible strength in its aura.

This was the thing that had taken Yukito that day. This was the threat Clow said had sought out what lay secret in Yukito's body.

This is what beckoned Yukito out to this place with its unheard call.

It spoke.

Why have not you done what I have bid you to do? The new Master. She still lives.

The velvety soft sound of its voice made the hairs on the back of Touya's neck rise.

Holding Yukito's face in its delicate elongated hands, it studied him closely.

"I-I-…" Yukito stammered, his fear so acute his entire body trembled.

The terror in Yukito's voice was like a knife twisting in Touya's stomach. He couldn't let this happen. He would do something-

Come out precious Yue. I need you. Clow's lovely Yue.

Yukito's back arched stiffly as a ripple of energy spread from its hands.

Touya felt the ripple's spidery passage reach and push through his mind. It filled him with a vileness so deep he thought for a moment he might throw up. The tree was the only thing keeping him on his feet.

After you crush Her beating heart in your fist I will take pleasure in slicing off your pretty wings so I may keep them for myself.

Yukito let out a low pained moan and sagged to his knees. An indistinct line of radiance began to trace itself high over his back in the shape of the monstrous wings of the creature within.

The dancing lines faltered and faded. Instead of forming into the solid form Touya had witnessed twice before, it instead fizzled like sparks that showered down to the street leaving Yukito unchanged.

Its peculiar eyes blossomed from orange to deep red rage.

No.

It grasped Yukito's limp wrist and brutally yanked him to his feet in a furious rising scream of frustration.

The charm Clow had placed held firm. Touya felt a rush of relief that quickly faded into fear. What would it do now that it knew it had been forestalled?

Touya froze in place, his worry momentarily melting away.

Touya's gift told him someone living was near by.

Directly above him, something was pouring down like the heat of the summer sun. It was steady and strong, vibrant and alive. Confused, Touya looked upwards. There, up among the branches that hung over his head was a person crouched and half hidden by the leaves. Young, he was dressed strangely and was holding up a sword. Stranger still, he was whispering softly.

An odd unending murmur of magic was flowing and unwinding in the air, strong, like the scent of candle pinched out between two fingers.

Touya recognized him with a flare of alarm. It was that Chinese boy he had run into outside of Yukito's house.

Ignoring the oddity of his presence or his actions, Touya had to stop him, tell him to get away from this place. The warning was on his lips when quite unexpectedly a surge of energy exploded from the sword blade so fiercely it threw Touya to the rumbling ground.

It rolled as it uncoiled like a living thing through the air, rushing and crackling unstoppable as a lightening bolt towards Yukito and his tormentor.

Touya looked up wide eyed just in time to see it strike them both. "YUKI!"

Surprised, the entity released Yukito from its grasp and seemed to contract into itself, abruptly shrinking to half its size. A Chinese symbol blazed and flared like a wicked flame on its body. It hissed and shrieked as the seal flashed and ignited on its flesh. With one last angry howl, the body erupted desperately into a vortex swallowing itself back up to escape the attack until it was gone, leaving only a swirl of leaves on the street where it had stood.

Yukito was left there, standing absolutely still, his arms hanging limply at his sides.

Panting, Touya looked up to see that the student had jumped down from the high perch and was now right next to him. Raindrops hit the blade of the sword he held in his hand and turned into steam.

"It will come back." The words were full of traces of the language of his home. "I have a place that it can't find. Follow me."

He turned and dashed down the street away from Touya.

"Wait!" Touya called out after him. He staggered to his feet and ran to Yukito. His friend's eyes were completely blank, his pupils dilated almost completely black. The skin of his arms was cold and clammy to the touch.

Touya pulled at Yukito's hand until he would at least move his feet.

Having no other choice, Touya followed the bright green pulse of the boy that was left glittering in a trail behind him. Yukito allowed himself to be lead but seemed not to hear any of Touya's questions or pleas. Although thankfully his fear was gone it had been replaced with… nothing.

Touya cast watchful looks over his shoulder as they went.

Judging by the foreboding murmurs of the frantic shadows that reached at them as they passed, Touya hoped the place they were being guided to was close at hand.

 

 

 

 

It was an interesting house.

Not because of its wealth or view of the city, but that it was completely devoid of the whispers and flickering spirits that Touya never failed to see no matter where he was. But their absence was not natural. There were strong seals hidden here, ancient secret seals like the one that had cast the tall being away. Such things could keep a matter of things at bay. The person, the entity that had summoned Yukito would not be able to see them if they remained here. But they only had one more night before the creature called Yue came back.

Touya was confident he could make Yukito stay here even by force if he had to, but he was helpless in the face of the being with wings. They didn't have much time to figure out what had to be done.

The boy brought Yukito gingerly to a chair and sat him down into it before timidly wrapping a blanket around his shoulders. The fierce set of the boy's eyes and fixed small frown softened when he did this making Touya wonder at the motivation behind it.

There was a hostility that returned to the boy's eyes when they met Touya's again. At first Touya did not understand why but then it came to him easily as the most extreme states of others usually did.

It was devotion.

That was one emotion Touya could sense as easily as any other because of its profound nature but still he was compelled to wonder where it had started and why. How often had this child lingered outside Yukito's home and how much time had he spent observing Yukito unnoticed and unseen?

Touya now sat at the table and waited for the boy introduced as Li to start talking first. Touya accepted now that the magic unfolding around him was doing so at its own pace and as he knew the manner of things, he knew that trying to force it to reveal what it was not ready to give, was useless.

Li, begrudgingly, placed a cup of tea before Touya and sat opposite him.

Touya knew this was not a normal child. He knew this person may be his only chance.

"Clow told me someone would help me, "Touya ventured, warming his hands on the ceramic cup. "I didn't think it would be you."

At the sound of the name, Li's eyes widened in shock but he remained silent.

"Thank you." Touya said quietly.

They both looked towards the window where Yukito sat staring out across the city skyline, the blanket fallen off one shoulder. Since the encounter with the man who was not quite a man, Yukito had not said a word to either of them in question or protest. It was as if part of his mind had vanished along with the sinister apparition. The idea of it made Touya's hands grip his teacup hard.

"Clow could do many things."

Li's serious tone brought Touya back. He had decided to finally explain what they had seen.

"Clow could create life."

There was a measured silence for several moments while Li watched Touya to judge his reaction.

Nodding, Touya encouraged him to continue.

"But…," Li clasped his hands together on the table. "… the first life he made, was a mistake."

The thought of one man having so much power that he could manifest life was overwhelming. The thought of that power going bad and what could be born of it made Touya's blood run cold.

Li continued. "There is a legend that the very first being Clow created was so corrupted that he knew he had to destroy it. They say it gave Clow Reed deep sorrow to give something life then take it away and in his hesitation the beast escaped."

Listening carefully, Touya noticed the boy was using the words reverently as one does when repeating a sacred tale committed to memory.

"Not long afterwards, Clow Reed brought forth many more beings and he cared for them."

Touya's thoughts turned to the winged creature that the powerful ghost seemed intent on saving. Was that just one of his children? "How many are there?" Touya had to ask.

Li ignored his question and went on in a story telling voice. "It is said that the being that fled from Clow Reed saw the love Clow lavished on his new creations and grew even more hateful in its jealousy."

Clow had mentioned that the Yue creature had been warped in order to slaughter the new master. But who was this master and what was it master of? He would ask Li what he knew about this matter but something told him to wait. Meanwhile, the message in the story Li told to him was very clear.

"It wants revenge." Touya stated.

"That is the legend told by my Family." The boy looked down, his face moving closer to troubled uncertainty now that the scant facts he held were now told, this duty more or less fulfilled.

"You hurt it." Touya looked at him intently. "You can make it go away."

"I lack the power." Lowering his eyes further, Li's expression shifted to poorly hidden embarrassment. "I cannot destroy it."

Touya sighed, his expression grim. It seemed like he was right back where he had started despite Li's information. If Li couldn't get rid of the thing then who could?

Suddenly remembering, Touya retrieved the mysterious card out of his pocket and placed it on the table.

"What is this, do you know?"

Li stared down at it in undisguised wonderment.

Touya felt his heart quicken.

"I've never seen one like this." He sounded more like the boy he was, too awed by the object to keep his veneer in place. "Where-where did you get it?"

Touya remembered Yukito holding it up in the emptiness of his house. Who had left it with him? Perhaps Clow had a much more active hand in all of this than Touya thought would be possible for a spirit. He wanted to save his creation just as much as Touya wanted to save Yukito right? And Clow was certainly no ordinary ghost.

"Just tell me what it is." He urged softly.

"A Wild Card." Li said touching the smooth blank face on its opposite side. "This can do what I cannot."

Touya stood. "We only have until tonight." He walked to the window, crouched down at Yukito's feet and looked up at his passive unchanging face. "Then Clow's angel comes back."

Li absorbed this silently and without comment but Touya felt the anxiety glimmer brightly through the verdant lines that radiated from the child.

An angel. Touya was surprised to have that word in his mind in reference to the severe creature that had tried to end his life. Yukito sat uninterested in them both, unmoving and mute even when Touya smoothed back his hair. "When Yue comes back I think that thing will notice. We can be ready for it when it comes."

Li stood and nodded trying to conceal his youthful excitement. "I will prepare!" He disappeared into the recesses of his oddly unoccupied house of people or ghosts.

Touya thought briefly whether or not Li was a person like Yukito, living alone in a shroud created by some man long dead.

"It will be over soon, Yuki." Touya whispered to him softly now that they were alone.

Yukito turned his vacant gray eyes to meet Touya's and for one brief moment seemed as if he wanted to say something.

Touya watched Yukito and knew that somewhere in there his friend had heard his voice.

"I promise."


	5. Chapter 5

About this capture

Cardcaptor Sakura- Receding

part 6  
by Mink

 

Touya felt, as he had felt often the past few weeks, as though he had somehow entered a world laying just under his own turning him as invisible as the ghosts that drifted overhead.

The streets were empty as they headed towards the children's park. Touya had decided it was a good a place as any to wait for the return of the winged creature called Yue, and the inevitable appearance of the thing that sought Yue out. Thankfully, the park was as deserted as the streets because of the weather or the hour. Touya watched the sluggish spirits that lingered around the crown of the fantastical concrete penguin that dominated the popular meeting place, and felt their curious hesitation when they took notice of Yukito.

Yukito's eyes were dark but he had become more animated since they had arrived. He blinked and looked around them, a small part of his smile returning to his face. But it was just confused and disoriented enough to make Touya wish Yukito had remained blank.

Touya was going to seat him down on the ground but Yukito pulled away and wandered to stand by himself in the center of the park. When Yue was released from Clow's charm, the angel creature would go directly to its new bidding. Whoever the new master was would not see the dawn unless Li did what he said he could do.

Li slid his blade from the scabbard at his back. Its gleam made the shadows around them erupt in an excited chatter of whispers.

"Should we…" Touya did not want to say it but he asked Li anyway, quietly, as though Yukito could comprehend his words. "… restrain him?"

"Won't matter." Li crouched forward holding his weapon in an arc over his head and began the exercise of sword forms.

Touya nodded, sickened at what he had suggested and sickened at the notion that when Yue returned, it would indeed not matter if his friend was wrapped in chains of steel. This could not be stopped with earthly solutions. This required the aid of another realm all together. Their plan was painfully simple. Li said he held a seal that would keep Yue just long enough. And then….

Touya removed the card from his jacket pocket. Flipping the card around in his hands, he wondered at what powers lay with in it. "How does it work?"

Li halted his blade mid form and cocked his head to the side, plainly weighing in his mind how much to explain.

"In a card game…" Touya was irritated with the hesitation when time was so short. "…a wild card means it can used as any suit-"

"This card may be used as any of the cards Clow created."

Touya did not understand. "He created more of these-"

Yukito startled them both by speaking out loud and gesturing towards the sky. Touya could tell that it was nonsense, slurred sentences regarding their school and a vague warning about the weather. Maybe somewhere in his confusion Yukito knew what was coming.

The sun had set in the clouds. They wouldn't be waiting for much longer.

Touya flipped the card to the blank side thoughtfully. He would not ask how it would be used or the manner of its nature, that knowledge was beyond him and all within it was Li's domain. He would have to trust this child to do what he couldn't do. All at once, the weight of that unwanted reliance became agonizingly clear.

"If you hurt Yuki-"

"I won't." Li shot back angrily.

 

 

Yukito was still speaking softly as though in his own world. Touya listened to his voice grow fainter and fainter, his eyes fixed on the swirling sky, as though in a trance. He was leaving them slowly. Soon he would be gone, replaced. Touya clenched his fist.

And then they would have to be ready.

A strong breeze disturbed Yukito's hair and ruffled the fabric of his thin shirt. Touya shivered but Yukito stood still, as though he did not feel it. Then Touya knew the change had begun.

If he hadn't been watching for it Touya would have missed the small sparkling trail of gold that seemed to evaporate from Yukito's body in a mist. It was Clow's charm. It had expired.

The burst of wind seemed to draw out the mantle of long white hair, the flowing robes suddenly materializing around Yukito's slight frame. Touya caught the shock on Li's face when the white crest of wings burst forth. The wind died and in that instant, Yue turned and stood before them. The white robes were still stained dark at the shoulder, one wing hung badly as if broken.

They had little time to react.

Ignoring the wounds as before, Yue looked in all four directions quickly detecting the prey, its senses already honed and set towards the objective, the end of the new Master. Touya could feel the creature's focus as keen as a knife point drawn across skin.

As Yue took to the air, his captured will boiling with white fire, Touya and Li nodded to one another.

Brandishing a seal across his blade, Li knelt down as if in prayer.

As before, his head lowered and few words spoken, the blade exploded like an unchecked spout of energy. An unleashed binding spell unwound itself in thin coils of magic born rope. They whipped about Yue, subduing him savagely and pulling the sky bound creature back so hard it shook the ground.

Yue's wings thrashed against the unexpected power ensnaring him. It was horrifying to watch this once proud being desperately claw at the cruel bands of light that crisscrossed tightly over its body.

Li fell to one knee, the effort clearly had taken more than he had expected.

The creature writhed as the seal settled.

But then the seal did something unexpected. For a span of a few moments the madness seemed to clear from the cool blue eyes and Yue looked around in a kind of helpless panic that pained Touya more than he thought it could.

He walked towards it, ready to say something, anything to reassure it, comfort it. Instead it spoke first, choking out its words, its hands struggling with the tight binds that had lashed cruelly around its pale throat.

"You should.... stay away."

Touya's chest heaved as he stepped backwards. "I'm trying to hel-"

"You cannot help me." The creature's voice was heavy in its agony. "This effort is…. useless… this cannot hold me…"

"It will hold you long enough." Touya said quietly. "Long enough for it to find you."

The winged creature raised its head to look at him questioningly.

It was at that moment that the mistake Clow created, the unwanted First Born made itself known.

It did not appear right away. But Touya sensed its arrival before he saw it, the sound of pain from the creature, Yue, marked its presence. It was despair, it was hopelessness and it was all Touya could do to hold his ground as the black form materialized from nothingness. Its limbs were unnaturally long, its body hard and black and smooth, perfectly featureless. The eye sockets were like gaping holes into the furnace of its skull. Now that he was so close, Touya did not know why he had ever thought that this grotesque was comparable to a man. The hiss of its voice made Touya's blood freeze.

Yue, you have come back to me.

Completely ignoring Touya and Li it lumbered towards the white robed creature. Li's nearly spent seal was easily ripped aside, freeing Yue. The tall wings burst forth from their binds only to sag in the embrace of the long crushing black arms. Like an echo, rage spread and resounded, its wrath darkening the sky.

You need further teaching.

In one motion, it grasped Yue, spindly long fingers wrapped around the fine line of his chin and jaw. Yue struggled, letting out frantic gasping sounds as the point of one finger grew to needle sharpness, its aim for one of the bright, pale eyes.

You must obey.

Breaking from his mute shock, Touya looked to Li. "Now!" He hissed.

The boy was in action.

Li was surrounded by one hundred auras and none of them were weak or uncolorful. Touya saw them blend over his head in one large kaleidoscope, whirling and collecting down into Li's blade and then super hot into the card that pressed up against it.

The blank card flew with the fury of a storm from his hand, channeling an incredible barrage of wind and light. Enraged, the monster shrieked, releasing Yue to face the affront full on. Catching the blazing conflagration of the card in one of its claws, the energy the card held crackled and snapped like a dying fire.

Touya looked back and forth between Li and the card that fluttered slowly down to the earth. It hadn't worked.

Assured that this attack was over, the shadowy being seemed to muse in wonder at Li who held his sword at the ready but did not move. It then turned its flickering red gaze to Touya.

"I'm sorry." Li said under his breath. "It's stronger… than I thought."

Touya realized how much Li was concealing what the seal and the attack had cost him. He had exhausted his resources. He had done all he could do.

The smoldering red light of its eyes flared briefly on the dark face. It raised a large hand, the fingers unfolding like a spider. Touya threw his arm over his head at the heat and noise that poured forth from its open palm but he heard Li cry out as it struck him.

Touya expected to find nothing but the boy's broken body but incredibly Li remained. He struggled to stay upright, supporting himself with his sword, but then, with one final regretful look to Touya, he collapsed.

The shadow being's face had stretched wide and revealed a gaping mouth. The fiery slash was as ghastly as the grin of a jack-o-lantern. It lifted its hand and prepared to end Touya as well.

Touya stared at the blank card where it lay on the scorched ground.

 

 

 

 

Time seemed to slow down and the panic that had been surging uncontrollably turned almost unimportant. Touya's heart slowed in his chest and he knew why.

"Touya."

He shut his eyes and then opened them again lifting his head to look up above him.

"Mother?" She was there unseen but felt in the ether, hovering so close to him he could smell the warm scent of her skin.

"Use it "

"How?" His voice shook.

"Give Yue his purpose."

His mother's spirit had never felt so distressed. The potency of her alarm brought her closer like the clarity of a telescope does a star.

Purpose.

His mother whispered in his ear soothing him. "Show Yue what he wants."

Then all of a sudden, in that one moment, Touya completely understood.

He picked up the card.

Closing his eyes, Touya felt the card in his hand open the tap only he controlled to his power, his gift. It was funneling it down through him and out of him and filling itself with his essence. It was taking so much so fast he felt the flare of fear but he knew it was too late to stop what he had started.

The card began to shimmer in his hands.

Touya spoke loudly.

"Give this mistake of Clow the guise of the new Master."

The card vibrated and sang through his hands, and the name: Illusion formed solid and clear. Touya opened his eyes to watch the card evaporate radiantly and then flow swiftly towards Yue and the dark being.

It rushed around them both, saturating and swirling around their bodies.

The shadowy figure began to contort.

Before Touya's eyes, it grew smaller and more substantial. Its flesh took on the tone of a human being, its eyes began to turn green and childish.

When it had finally stopped, it was now in the shape and form of a young girl.

Touya blinked. "Sakura?"

The shadow being was now staring down at its now childlike hands in baffled confusion.

"No.… " The voice was Sakura's, lost and small but the soul that uttered it was not the girl herself.

Yue had painfully righted and spread its wings out to their full magnificent span. His forced purpose was back in place, the madness given to him was in complete control.

"At last." The eyes blazed with a cold fire. "It is you."

The child gasped as the shadow of Yue fell over it.

 

 

 

Touya could not watch this creature rip the small body to pieces. He turned when her pitiful screams began and collapsed to the ground beside Li. Touya grit his teeth and clasped his hands over his ears trying to block the horror of the sounds of the undoing. No matter what it was in actuality, the cries were of his sister, her pleas for help, and her pain.

Li breathed, his face in unconsciousness was finally young, unguarded. Touya clasped the hand that still grasped his sword and pulled it over the boy's chest, willing his strength to lift Li and then carry him out of the path of the doomed first child of Clow under the savage wrath of his angel. He staggered and fell with Li in his arms when concrete king of the park exploded in the onslaught and rained shards of debris down over them.

The gentle touch of his mother's hand pressed cool to Touya's forehead and the sound dimmed behind him.

Summoning what was left, Touya lifted Li, stumbled across the street and slid down behind a wall holding Li up against his side. The screams of his sister turned into the roar of what really lay under the deception of the Wild Card and then went thankfully, and utterly silent.

 

 

 

 

When Touya's eyes opened again it was over. Li was gone.

Touya sat up unsteadily and saw the blank Wild Card had been carefully placed in his hand. It was still warm with the summer green sunlight of the Chinese boy's hands that had put it there. The faint spatter of the boy's sparkle trailed away from him and down the road and past.

While he watched, the card glowed softly and crumbled like a fragile butterfly wing in his fingertips. It had been summoned back, leaving as it had come. Touya pulled himself to his feet.

Yukito lay alone and unmoving on the wet ground. What looked like torn shreds of paper blew around him taking to the sky where they ignited and turned to ash.

The ash was carried away into the night, vanishing in the rain and washed away as if it had never been.

 

 

 

Touya sat in the still quiet of the house and listened to it.

Yukito's body had been warm and strangely heavy in his arms as he carried him up the steps.

The futon was as he had last seen it. It was neatly made and sitting alone in the center of the room. Touya had laid him gently down onto it and sat looking down on the sleeping face for a very long time. One part of him wanted to shake Yukito until he woke so Touya could tell him things the things a person laments not having confessed to someone who has died. The other part dreaded even more that Yukito would awake confused, distant and closer to that of the stranger that dwelled hidden inside him.

But he hadn't died. Yukito was here.

It was easier right now like this to just see Yukito's chest rise and fall peacefully. It was so dark all Touya could see was his vague shape and the soft human sound of his slow, shallow breathing. After a few hours Touya stopped shaking. After a few more, he allowed his gaze to fall away from Yukito without the fear that if he looked away for one moment, he would vanish.

So Touya sat, on the floor, his back against the wall and he listened to the house. For the first time in a very long time, his world was utterly silent. The rain spattered on the windows and car tires sped wetly down the road but the ghosts were all gone. Not just from the small boundaries of the house but beyond, down every street and in every direction Touya could reach with his mind.

Touya absently tapped Yukito's folded glasses lightly against the floor. There weren't just hushed, they had fled completely like a flock of birds that takes to the sky all at once.

He hadn't noticed he had started to doze off until the soft rustling of a blanket reached him. Touya started, abruptly and completely awake. A glance at his watch told him that it was nearly dawn.

Yukito had rolled over onto his side and pulled the corner of his covers over his shoulder. He was shivering. Touya had just laid him on top of his sheets and hadn't thought to cover him despite the cool night air. It seemed as if Yukito would be beyond those needs or concerns but he wasn't. He felt cold. He felt pain. Touya felt a pang of his own betrayal towards Yukito. He could not give up what he knew of his friend even after what he had been told and seen.

He crawled forward towards Yukito and carefully tipped the sleeping body towards him to free the soft blanket.

Yukito's eyes blinked open when he was moved.

It was if the house that sat around them took a swift intake of breath.

Touya froze as the room suddenly blurred and then grew brighter. The blank walls suddenly had pictures on them, a small lit lamp grew out of a tidy desk that emerged from the floor. It shed a warm glow on the newly sprouted curtains which were shut carefully for the night. Touya glanced back at Yukito as he struggled awake. When Yukito closed his eyes the images around them grew dimmer, and less distinct. When he opened them and woke once more the colors and shapes burned brighter, taking form and radiating with energy.

It comforted Touya to see such care placed in the delusion. It eased his mind that maybe Yukito didn't spend any nights like he had, alone in the darkness, staring and listening to an empty house.

Downstairs, Touya could now hear the soft voice of Yukito's grandmother as she sung in the kitchen cooking, as women often did, in the darkness of dawn. The smell of her work wafted through the open door.

"Toya?" Yukito was still in his arms, his sleepy eyes shocked but pleasantly surprised.

Touya brushed his lips against Yukito's forehead. "Good morning." He told him softly.

 

 

 

 

It took several moments but Yukito dislodged himself from Touya, flustered and blushing red.

"Were you here all night?" Yukito went nervously to his door when he heard his grandmother call to him to come down. He shut it and turned to look at Touya. He bit at his lip worried. "Oh Toya, I will be in so much trouble."

It was him. He wasn't afraid or in pain.

Grinning with a giddy relief, Touya lay on the still warm futon with his hands folded behind his head and watched Yukito undress hurriedly, grabbing at his school uniform from a now full closet.

"What are you so happy about?" Yukito asked slightly exasperated as he hopped into his uniform trousers and missed the leg for a second time.

"Nothing." Touya smiled while he held up the glasses Yukito was conducting a frustrated search for on his desk.

Yukito was perfectly horrified at the prospect of his grandparents discovering that Touya had spent the night in his room and suggested that he find another way out, gesturing to the window, while he went downstairs for breakfast.

 

 

Touya slipped out the window and down into the garden. He had to get home and change for school. He was half way there when he realized, there was no rain falling cold on his face.

The weather had broke and the strong warm rays of the sun were already breaking from the clouds.

 

the end -

Continued in the next Arc of this series- Yue: Within the Outs


	6. The After

"What do you think of this Yue?"

Yue had been watching his Master for many hours from across the garden. His master seemed to enjoy being outdoors rather than in and confounded Yue many times with his daylong fascinations. He had not known Clow had been aware of him which was, of course, a foolish assumption.

"Come now." Clow urged him, gesturing with a hand.

Yue straightened his back and approached, trying to keep the curiosity from hastening his steps.

Clow smiled as he drew closer and stepped aside, clearly proud of his work.

Yue peered over Clow's sweeping hand of presentation.

It wasn't much.

It was a small sapling planted in the damp earth. It had but three thin branches and was all in all a pitiful site amongst the glorious things planted or growing wild around it.

Yue searched around it thinking perhaps he missed what his master was trying to show him.

"What do you think?" Clow asked.

Yue felt worry, he could not see anything but this small unexceptional seedling. He took a deep breath and braced himself. He felt he should not let his Master down after being asked his opinion. "I think…I think you should provide a fence for it."

Clow raised an eyebrow. "A fence?"

"Keroberos will most likely step on it."

Clow's abrupt laughter embarrassed him and Yue lowered his eyes back to the ground.

"Do not be ashamed Yue." He assuredly him softly. "I find you remarkable."

Yue felt his embarrassment shift to the blush of uncertain pride.

"It is quite safe, do not worry," He told him crouching down next to it and patting the earth around its roots with affection. "This tree will grow to be tall and old as the mountains."

Yue did not know what to say so he said nothing. Clow frequently did and said things he did not understand.

Clow righted himself and turned towards Yue pleased. Even though he had been just handling the damp soil his hands were clean, and he placed both of them on Yue's face.

"This tree will bring you shade to sleep in and peace with its blossoms."

Yue froze as the warmth of his touch suffused his cool skin and flowed through his form and out to the very tips of his wings. His master fed him this way, this contact, this exchange of power that kept Yue alive and his strength intact.

"This tree will be here long after I have passed from this earth."

Yue felt a flare of anger at the idea, the thought, the mere mention of being left behind in such a way.

"You were not created just to serve my friend." Clow whispered, "You must know the joys, sorrows and beauty of the world. Even if it means one day with another."

Yue placed a pale hand on one of the hands that held his face. "That day will never come."

 

 

 

Within the Outside  
By Mink

 

 

There were times when the being Yue reached dormancy to the point where Yukito's life was like a half remembered dream, unimportant and insignificant. However, since the First Born of Clow arrived, everything had changed.

The memory of his capture and then torture was still vivid, and despite that the danger had passed, Yue had not been able to truly descend down deep into the state he had dwelled in before. It was not that he was incapable, but apprehension brought him back every time his shroud grew too quiet and distant from the waking world that his false form inhabited.

His prior complacency had cost him much.

Yue had never been adequately schooled in that sort of pain. Though Clow had been adamant that he became experienced in all things, he had never learned to take these bitter lessons with much sincerity. After all, why should he have feared anything? He had been fashioned infallibly. Physical pain he could tolerate, it could be buried and forgotten with ease. It was the humiliation, the forced betrayal of his mind and body that wounded him now. Kept him alert, like a human. Wary, like one. Pathetic. To wholly forget this disgrace would be ground hard won. Why had Clow never warned him of such dangers? Even after death, he had left him incomplete. How Yue longed for him now to explain this horrible waking half life. The torture of bearing witness to the goings on of this Yukito, this husk, careful of every step, mindful of every shadow.

And now this other.

Touya.

He was never far away from the false form.

Yue was forced to listen to inane conversations, take their long walks, and bear incomprehensible jokes.

There was however, something familiar in the contours of the tall dark haired teenager's face, the lilt of his voice, even the manner in which he moved or walked. It suggested there was something more to this boy than it seemed.

The sense of it also accompanied the signature of the child's power. In the span of Yue's life it was not very long ago, but it now seemed like a century had passed since he had taken Touya to the skies and listened to him plead for Yukito's life. Yue had felt it then in Touya's flesh.

So it was during one of those many times Touya was near by, Yue had reached into his thoughts to discover where this familiarity lay. He revealed Touya's energy amassed like thunderclouds in mind and soul flickering darkly as a storm. Was this human someone like his previous Master? Did this school boy house some tie to the great magic?

Touya soon sensed him and Yue had with drawn immediately. Yue expected him to know what had happened. He expected Touya to seek Yukito's eyes with questions.

But he hadn't.

Yue sighed. No, he was not like Clow at all. He lacked the perception.

That soon changed.

As Yue continued to observe Touya from behind Yukito's eyes, he was alarmed to discover that Touya had begun to take notice. Perturbing at first, Yue soon found as the days turned weeks and weeks turned months that he deeply loathed Touya's awareness of him. This was one other that knew he existed just to hide, someone to witness that he dwelled as some weak phantom no one else could see or hear.

His once proud service and stature was reduced to living within the shell of a fragile boy and this Touya, this young human, could watch him suffer his humiliation there.

It began to grow intolerable when Touya began to look for Yue instead of just noticing him.

There were smiles. Glances. Even comments not meant for Yukito at all. Touya grew braver and more brash with his communication, unaware of the effect it had on the being he could not see but only feel.

Touya played with him. With his pride. With his ire.

Why had Clow done this to him?

On the days Yukito was alone kneeling in the silence of the house, Yue sometimes found himself sighing in time with the false form as if they had for one moment been in perfect synch in their loneliness.

As these days turned to nights, Yue's thoughts drifted back to the days that had once seemed without end. His years with Clow Reed and their travels were his comfort and almost all he had to sustain him through the quiet darkness until dawn.

 

 

 

"Oi, Yuki! What do you think of this?"

It was late in the day and the school was quiet. Most of the students that lingered were there not by choice but assigned various tasks the school required.

Organizing the sport equipment lockers. Updating the message boards with flyers and posters. Cleaning erasers and stacking text books.

Or like today, taking old used boxes from the library and bringing them to storage.

Touya had always been ambivalent towards his surroundings but he was particularly fond of his school library. Open to two floors the one outer wall was an elaborate design of stained glass that served as the vast room's windows. He liked the soft glow the cobalt, gold, red and emerald light created at this exact time when the day was more than half done.

He had been rummaging through a stack of boxes that lined up against the wall for them to carry and put away. They were all very old, some of the cardboard containers had ripped and spilled piles of crumbling magazines onto the floor. Touya was pulling out a larger box from underneath them all.

He glanced over his shoulder when he noticed Yukito had not paused in his work. "Come here."

Yukito put down the heavy load he had in his arms. "What is it?"

Touya had, with some difficulty as the content was heavy, pulled the box on its end side and had leaned it up against the wall.

Yukito watched as Touya carefully tucked the yellowed newspapers down around its sides revealing a statue.

It was extraordinary.

Yukito smiled at the wonder of it. It was made of a pure white stone, the slender arc of wings at the figures back met like hands at their tips, its serene gaze cast demurely to the ground, its robes flowing with its hair.

"What do you think?" Touya asked brushing some of the dust from its surface almost reverently.

Yukito's smile widened. "I think it's beautiful."

"It is." Touya agreed thoughtfully

It was a shame it was hidden away in that box for who knew how many years and left for no one to see it. Touya wondered why it had been put away in the first place, surely someone must have missed seeing it sitting under the brilliant glow of the stained glass.

Touya looked back up to him from where he crouched on the floor, he felt his expression shift slightly, looking past Yukito. Changing the tone of his voice, Touya addressed someone else in the room although they were alone.

"It reminds me of you"

Yukito's smile faded and he blinked at Touya with vague sense of awareness.

Touya felt it there behind Yukito's eyes, something rippled through, bright and shrill as though it didn't belong to him.

It was a reaction. It was stunned. Hostile.

Touya smirked.

"I'm hungry. Do you want to have dinner at my house?"

Yukito nodded numbly.

"Let's finish."

 

 

 

 

Yukito laughed softly as he took off his glasses and carefully folded them before placing them on Touya's bedside table.

"What's so funny?" Touya asked as he lay down next to Yukito on his bed.

Yukito made room for him while rubbing at his eyes. "I was just thinking about that angel."

Touya took the glasses from his table and put them on.

"What about it?"

"The librarian is going to be so pleased to see it on her desk, she thought it was stolen a very long time ago."

Touya lay on his back and looked at his ceiling through the thick glass. They made his room a featureless blur of color and light. They were already making his eyes strain and he could feel the beginnings of a headache. "Ouch."

"TO-ya." Yukito clicked his tongue irritably.

Touya took the glasses off and rolled onto his side, propped up on his elbow, to study Yukito's face. Yukito looked so different without his spectacles on. Touya had been surprised the first time he had seen Yukito without them. He had expected him to look younger but it was the opposite. He looked older, more serious, strangely focused.

"How do you know?"

"I don't know." Yukito shrugged, sleepy and unconcerned. "I just have a feeling."

Yukito needed these thick frames of glass to see but apparently he could still see some things without them.

Opening his mind slowly, Touya touched Yukito with a tentative brush of power.

Yue was there. Touya felt the draw he always experienced when the winged being came into focus, no matter how faint or meager. He felt pushed to try to provoke anything from its brooding silence.

Touya could feel Yue try to sink down deep to where it drifted in a sleep state but panic anchored the being there upon knowing Touya had spotted it, shimmering so close under his other form that Touya paused and could clearly see Yue in Yukito's eyes.

Fascinated, and without thinking, Touya tilted their face towards his and his lips were on theirs.

Yue's panic manifested itself in Yukito and suddenly Touya was pushed away.

Yukito was struggling to breathe.

"Yuki?"

Yukito rubbed at his chest as it hitched trying to take in air. "I'm-I'm sorry-"

Yue was there fighting to not flow forth unheeded, fighting not to lose control.

Touya sat back in astonishment at the sudden presence of them both at the same time. He had not known this was possible. He could see Yue read the look of shock on his features. The being felt Touya's wonder.

"Is something wrong?" Touya's eyes flashed with curiosity.

"No." Yue said with Yukito's mouth and voice.

Touya sat and stared. He was waiting. Would Yue recede and allow Yukito to come back to himself?

There was still something in Yukito's face, now, of desire.

"Forgive me." There was a trace of anger in the voice the creature within used. Yue did not want to apologize for this intrusion between them but he was willing Yukito back, gently nudging the other side up into his place.

Touya gripped Yukito's shoulders. "Wait."

Before Yue could ebb back into the welcoming comfort of darkness, Touya projected a wall, blocking Yue's path, willing if he could to halt the retreat just for a moment.

Caught, Yue blinked back up at him, not quite there, but not quite gone.

Touya kissed him hard, his thumb against Yukito's chin to open his mouth to his, and his other hand on the small of Yukito's back to press his hips to his own. It was Yue who growled back into Touya's mouth, and Yue's hands that gripped Touya's arms painfully.

A flare of Yue's rage stabbed through Touya, a brief agony behind his eyes making him break off. Yue had sent Touya's small but effective stay on him crashing back tenfold in his anger. The creature slipped down, rushing to pass the lower limits of Touya's range and reach its refuge.

Touya knew that it infuriated the being that he could still sense its shame behind Yukito's now puzzled smile.

He wondered if he had not made a large mistake.

 

 

 

 

Though Yukito's own hands shook and his mind scattered aimlessly, these emotions were not genuinely his. The smile was gone from his face as he walked alone along the now empty streets.

Yue smoldered, pure and hot within him, threatening to break through the unstable barrier of forms. But to what end? It had plagued Yue all this time but at last he realized the game. He knew now what Touya thought he wanted.

He looked up. The moon was beginning to rise. Already he could feel its pull, calling to him, amplifying him.

The moon would aid him.

Then and only then did the shadow pass out from behind Yukito's eyes.

The high school boy alone on the street shook his head at his own bewildering mood, reshouldered his backpack, and went home.

 

 

 

Touya tossed and turned in bed and sighed. He didn't know why he had done it. He shoved a pillow over his head and hit it a few times with his fist.

He rolled over onto his back and stared at the ceiling.

Touya tried to breathe softly in and out but soon found there was no way he could let himself relax.

His skin felt flushed.

Touya tried to focus on something else. The memory of the kiss replayed over and over in his mind. He bit at his lower lip reliving the feel of Yue's anger.

The square of his window was bright with the moonlight. It was a full moon Touya noted idly. It was round and perfect and somehow closer than the moon usually appeared in the sky. It was one of those nights that it seemed drawn closer to earth and every detail of its white face was easy to see with the naked eye.

Touya blinked and shut his mouth realizing that he was staring at the moon and had become mesmerized.

He focused on the thud of his heart, letting the strange thrum of the night wash over him, soothe him, until every one of his senses was filled with it. He felt his breathing slow, a sensation like the pleasant stupor after good wine overtaking him.

He was half asleep, peaceful and drowsy when the world shifted.

A firm grasp on his wrist yanked him from his bed and he landed with a hard thud onto the cold floor. Touya hissed when his head hit the wood under the thin carpet

Yue leaned over him in the dark.

How had he gotten inside without Touya sensing it? Speechless, Touya could see the faint waves of his power drift and dissipate off Yue's form. He felt each swell as it traveled the short distance between them and brushed against his mind, so heady and strong it made him dizzy. This was the source of what made everyone drawn to either form this being took. It was raw, overflowing and unchecked.

Was it the moon so close and radiant drowning its child in its own power, camouflaging the creatures passage through the night?

The broad wings were gone, put away however the creature managed it. The long white robes were as Touya remembered them. The severe expression on Yue's face was the same.

Yue spoke close to his ear.

"Do you enjoy taunting me?"

The sound of his voice unnerved Touya. It was Yukito's but changed, lower, heavier, older.

"Watching me. Speaking to me." Yue whispered to him. "Did you think you were safe from an answer?"

Touya's eyes blinked in a slow drugged way.

The moon shone large and round behind him, the stark light washing his bedroom white. Touya was entranced by the dark slits of Yue's pupils. As he stared at the strange eyes they pulsed menacingly. Through the haze of all the intermingled energies, he considered that he might be in danger. Touya jerked back away from the being but it caught his wrist as he struggled to stand.

Touya lost his footing as Yue yanked him backwards. Touya was pulled awkwardly into the being's lap as it sat down on his bed. Touya twisted in Yue's grip but it was useless, his efforts doubled when he felt a hand cover his mouth. Yue's strength surpassed his own even without the euphoria of his power running through Touya's veins.

"UNn-!" Touya protested loudly behind the firm hand when his t-shirt was pushed up exposing his chest to the cool night air. The hand that stifled him pushed down hard, forcing Touya head back on Yue's shoulder, his back pressed against the creature's chest. It was a simple gesture of warning.

Footsteps in the hall stilled them both.

Touya's breathing stopped and he shifted his gaze to the door and heard the gentle tentative knock.

"Touya-kun?" It was his father. "Are you alright?"

Touya squeezed his eyes shut then glared sideways at Yue. Did this creature really want his father to open that door to see why he didn't answer?

The cold blue eyes flared once again and it slowly retracted its hand from his mouth and locked it across Touya's chest.

"I-I'm fine." Touya's voice cracked, the creature's free hand was pulling the sweat pants he slept in down his hips and past his thighs. Besides his shirt, it was all he wore to bed.

"Are you... are you sure?"

His sweats tangled around his ankles, Yue slipped a strong hand under Touya's bare knee and pulled it up back almost against Touya's chest. The door was right in front of them.

"Ye-Yes." Touya managed behind clenched teeth.

His father seemed to hesitate but his footsteps retreated and the sound of his door closing was enough for the creature called Yue to be satisfied that they were once again alone.

In one smooth and silent movement, Yue moved Touya back to the floor, Touya now only in his red T-shirt.

"Let go of-"

It closed a hand back over his mouth and the long lithe body crouched between Touya's thighs, keeping his legs firmly apart.

"Quiet."

He strained, his hands trying to remove Yue's hand but Yue held him down, graceful long fingers holding him silently willing him to be compliant.

Touya calmed slowly.

It was the energy that flowed from Yue like warm water, and the gush of it that passed over Touya made his eyes flutter closed. Touya realized Yue was being deliberate, subduing him completely.

He relaxed unwillingly, no longer resisting when the hand on his mouth forced his cheek to lay against the floor. He felt his legs untense, his thighs which had been flexing and straining against Yue's sides, fell slack.

One delicately shaped hand was exploring him, moving across the exposed skin of his chest and then under the bunched up fabric of his shirt under his chin, touching along his collarbone, his shoulder to the curves of his biceps, then sliding down the hard flatness of his stomach... Touya groaned.

He felt the depth of his inexperience along with the certain shame that it was so obvious. Yue knew this, held his vulnerability like a prize. Nothing now could be kept from him. The thought that he might have hoped to shock Yue with his simple adolescent kiss now made his cheeks burn with his foolishness.

"Do you know what I am?"

Touya shook his head weakly.

The air shifted in the room and Touya saw in his minds eye the seal that held Yue's energy confined was beginning to unfasten. At the very same moment, against his will, Touya felt the safeguard he kept over his own source of power eased forward and then released with a swiftness that brought Touya physical pain.

He watched the two founts of energy meet silently in the ether above them. Touya's darker, swirling not unlike the spirits that his gifts made plain to him. Yue's was bright white, stronger, ancient, and twining around Touya's as if it meant to consume it.

But instead, it began to merge with him. What Touya had experienced until this point was nothing compared to what the angel harbored in each burning particle of its composition.

He felt the power begin to fill him, slowly at first. Touya gasped, uncertain and afraid, as it started. The sensation of Yue's force radiating in the room was one thing but actually having it flow into his own reservoir of power made his back stiffen. He had never felt anything like it, the intimate presence of another in a place that had been so absolutely his own.

With a small sigh, Yue let all he possessed rush forth, unchecked, uncontrolled, and flood into Touya's prone body.

"Do you know what I can do to you?"

Touya shuddered violently in the angel's arms when it hit, his back arching off the floor.

A sweat broke out on his naked skin and he let out a small whimper behind the firm hand that still covered his mouth. Touya was pushing back up to Yue, his hands grasping at the floor then pushing at Yue's shoulders, but the creature did not budge. His muffled desperate groans did nothing to change the passive expression Yue wore.

Touya was blind to anything but sensation when he felt Yue's hand fall away from his face. He could barely speak. "…please... stop…"

"Not…yet." Yue sounded different, strained to the limit of his magic. He was as diminished as Touya was saturated.

"I …can't…" Touya moaned, his gasp tinged with the staggering pleasure of it balanced with the terror of the enormity of it. It would extinguish him, incinerate him, swallow him whole and burst through his mind, undoing him from the inside out.

There was the hard tug of Yue to begin the end of the exchange, but something stopped his command. Instead, Touya felt the flow become impossibly larger, his own fount untying and locking onto what Yue had started, taking control of it, forcing it to spill open everything it contained instead of just what Yue willed.

Touya heard Yue gasp in pain and surprise somewhere above him.

It wasn't stopping, it was filling him and growing in intensity passing each moment when Touya thought he would be incapable of absorbing any more, but then, somehow did… he shook uncontrollably against the feel of the silk that hung from the angel down against the bare flesh of his throat, his chest, his hips.

Yue finally broke away and fell heavily against Touya's bed. Attempting to right itself, one arm gave way under the angel's weight and it slumped limply to the floor.

It was spent.

 

 

 

Touya lay still, panting, blinking rapidly at the sparks that exploded in his vision. He raised an unsteady hand to his face to see his flesh had taken on Yue's luminosity and left trails of its glow in the air when he moved.

He hadn't meant to take it all but the result was astounding. It was all within him now. Every last scorching speck was now a maelstrom inside his flesh. How had it happened?

Touya moved to Yue's side, his body's movement seemingly effortless with its newly given power. Yue watched him warily, so weakened that it could barely turn its head. Pulling the being upright, Touya held the drained body up when it threatened to slump back to the floor. They both faced each other on their knees.

Touya curled a fist into the soft white hair at the base of Yue's neck, and tipped his head to look into those strange eyes. There was a look in the alien gaze that Touya now could read.

He knew he could give Yue what he needed by the simplest physical touch. But he knew Yue could have done the same but hadn't. This creature had a heart and it pounded fiercely, in doubt and anxiety. It was unsure of what Touya meant to do.

He smiled, causing Yue's brow to furrow and worry to increase.

Touya brought their mouths together, and felt Yue's body stiffen in his arms.

Touya let the given power flow back, mimicking what Yue had done, slowly at first, then stronger, the first large surge of it causing the angel to make a small sound of mortified pleasure into Touya's mouth. Liking the sound, Touya opened the channel to its fullest and dipped the slighter body back, sliding one knee between Yue's.

As the body he held began to gain once more, Yue's hands struggled to brace themselves against the floor behind himself.

The feel of its departure felt as intoxicating as the feel of its deluge, and while Touya released it he realized the body he held was the same shape and feel of Yukito, familiar and comfortable. Even his smell was what Touya knew, like the garden after it rained, cool and clean.

Touya felt the last of it go, and then he was alone again, his power seemed a faint spark compared to what it had been when combined with another's, a glimpse of what lay with this being, the incredible difference and the sameness.

The founts closed and sealed.

Touya withdrew and felt somewhere the wooden floor rush up to meet his body as his consciousness left him. The moon's light faded as he did, until the night was silent and pitch black.

 

 

 

Yue left Touya where he lay on the floor and exited the house as he had come. Quietly, unseen and unnoticed.

He had wanted to frighten him. Shame him back. He wanted to prove that this was a game he was not capable of playing but it had all gone wrong.

Yue's hands shook in fists.

Pale fingertips touched his mouth that still tingled from being touched. Touya's capacity for it had astonished him. He had underestimated the energy kept within that boy. The level of Touya's control, as rough and unused as it was, could be compared to maybe even…

Yue stood in the cold wet dew of the grass and looked back up to the darkened window of Touya's room. The moon was disappearing with the approach of dawn. The dark blue field was staining the softer blue of the day and putting out the stars one by one.

No, not Clow.

Yue summoned his wings and spiraled up into the sky not watching the house he left vanish behind a layer of clouds.


End file.
